* David Powell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-04-27 12:10]: > Aristotle's suggestion is ok, in that it saves a bit of typing > in the common case where there is only one link - but in the > case where there is more than one link, a combined count seems > pretty useless: if there are multiple comment links, then > either the consumer can cope with them and process both the > links and counts, or the consumer can't cope with them and can > only process the combined count - but the count alone without > any links to reach the comments isn't very useful, so why > bother with it - consumers that can cope with multiple comments > links will be able to manage addition of the counts if > necessary.
I don’t think it’s that useless, actually. One case I can think of is where several comment feeds exist, where some comments are duplicated in multiple feeds, but others are not. In that case, the sum of local counts will be greater than the global count. I expect that in practice, if a global count is present, it will turn out to be the most precise count available, whereas there’s nothing you could infer from a sum of local counts. (That does not change the fact that all counts remain advisory, of course.) Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
